1. Field of the Invention
Baseball, America's game, once learned on the sandlot and alleys of America, has now become organized from top to bottom. Four and five year olds now begin with “T” ball, in which the ball is placed on an upstanding post, and the child swings at an essentially stationary object.
The child then progresses to Little League, AAU ball, and into school team sports, from the early grades through high school. For those with the requisite skills, there is a chance for a professional contract right out of high school, while others, for a variety of reasons, may decide to play college ball.
The benefits to be derived from playing the game are many and varied. Beginning with the obvious development of eye, hand coordination, the player learns how to run, catch, throw and how to interact with others in a team environment where sportsmanship and the art of being a good winner and loser are learned every day.
Skills learned in the very early years are typically carried forward as the participant grows and matures. It is possible, however, to improve on one's skills beyond that which might be expected as a consequence of natural progression which inevitably comes with age and experience. Indeed, countless time, effort and dollars have been, and continue to be, spent on an unimaginable variety of books and contrivances whose purpose and intent is to enhance one's skills at playing baseball.
Each such device, or writing, adds to the quantum of knowledge, and, to some extent, the skills of those who expose themselves to the learning process. Each, however, seems to focus on a particular aspect of the skill spectrum, while ignoring other, perhaps equally important, aspects of the games dynamics.
2. Overview of the Prior Art
Batting skills appear to be a particular focus of those who have dedicated time and effort to improvement of playing skills. Conventional wisdom appears to suggest that one's batting skills can be materially enhanced by grooving the swing. Slavish adherence to this philosophy has resulted in a rash of devices, memorialized in the patent art, which literally constrain the batter, by confining his or her bat to a particular swing path.
Trippet U.S. Pat. No. 2,985,452 is an early such device which a matrix of horizontal guides are provided to guide the bat. Gilfillan U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,852 carries Trippet a step further by adding a curved guide, thereby permitting the bat to remain on the guide for a longer portion of the batting stroke.
Laske U.S. Pat. No. 5,087,039 adds the baseball holder 65 to a pair of guides that define a channel within which the batter may swing.
Reference is next made to the Hardison, Jr. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,322,276 and 5,595,384. Hardison proposes a rigid arcuate guide supported on a vertical post. A stop 44 determines the apex of the swing, and one need only slide the bat down the guide to the ball. In theory, at least, repeated sliding of the bat along the guide will groove the swing . . . in theory.
There is another line of devices intended to improve batting skills by strategically positioning the ball, and among those are found the Morrison U.S. Pat. No. 5,478,070 and Bradley U.S. Pat. No. 6,435,990.
Mooney U.S. Pat. No. 6,413,175 is a ball positioning Tee, and Guerriero U.S. Pat. No. 5,951,413 combines a ball positioning tee with some linearly aligned rigid shafts to groove the swing toward the ball.
Finally, Licciardi et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,88,267 proposes a goose necked tee to permit simulation of a variety of pitches, within a structured environment.
Each of these devices addresses, to a greater or lesser extent, one or more aspects of the swinging of a bat, but none address the totality of the swing, or the problems that often appear when the device is removed, or the player finds himself under the pressure of game conditions.